Another moment found her in the living room, examining the photographs on the mantel there, now that the daylight afforded her a better perception. There were six photographs altogether, four large and two smaller. She assumed that the four large ones were of the Mickelson children, and she picked out Jack and Chase in their old-fashioned uniforms, drawing in her breath at the sight of Jack’s smooth jaw, long-lashed eyes, and heavy mouth. No wonder the girls had all been nuts about him. Chase had a narrower face and mouth, and an impenetrable look in his bright eyes. The third boy, with a narrow face like Chase’s, blond hair that stood up thick and straight over his forehead, and a smile that said he was up to no good, must have been Harry. The beautiful blond girl with her eyes narrowed at the camera had to be Jinny. The smaller photos, one of a handsome dark-haired boy with a reckless smile in a World War II Marine uniform, the other of a pleasant-looking girl with a rosebud mouth and curly blond hair, clearly were not as old, but it was a mystery to Dolly who they could be. Wilma’s grandchildren, perhaps? Dolly would have to find a way to ask Mrs. Fryt.

The rest of the living room, though it had not been rained on, looked nearly as forlorn as the dining room. The sofa and chairs were draped with white sheets, now gray with dust. Dolly’s eyes swept over the photographs on the mantel. “How could you?” she said, and she made up her mind: This family, wherever they were, and whatever had happened, did not deserve such a fine house. It was up to Dolly to rescue it from their neglect.

But the truth was, Byron, with his love of all things modern and clean, would never buy it in this condition.

She was going to have to fix up this house.

She thought of the very first movie she and Byron had seen together, around Christmas in 1946. It was called It’s a Wonderful Life. In it, Donna Reed had taken a run-down old house and fixed it up for her husband, played by Jimmy Stewart, without his knowing she was doing it. But once he saw the glow that the old house had put on his wife’s face, and the home that she had created for him there, of course he acquiesced to live there. It had struck Dolly particularly, sitting there in the theater on an almost-first date with the man she hoped to marry. She had thought it a wonderfully romantic thing, to make such an effort to create an ideal home for the man you loved. And now she had the chance to do just that—and this house wasn’t in nearly as bad a shape as the house in the movie.